


THERE IS REMEDY FOR ALL THINGS

by spicyshimmy



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-25
Updated: 2012-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-31 17:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/346812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicyshimmy/pseuds/spicyshimmy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not the story I meant to write. Varric Tethras finds a wanted apostate on the road and tells him a few tall tales in his final days. Alternate Universe. <i>By that point, he was a hunted man—or haunted, if you want to get particular. Either would suit him just fine and to be honest, he’d always been both together, never one thing or its opposite when he could be everything instead. Back then, I even thought it was impressive—how one person could be so much and still seem small. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	THERE IS REMEDY FOR ALL THINGS

We met on the open road.

By that point, he was a hunted man—or haunted, if you want to get particular. Either would suit him just fine and to be honest, he’d always been both together, never one thing or its opposite when he could be everything instead. Back then, I even thought it was impressive—how one person could be so much and still seem small. How it _made_ him smaller, instead of larger than life.

Larger than two lives. All things considered.

It was outside of Ansburg, not necessarily close to Antiva. You still had all The Weyrs to get through if you wanted to catch sight of the Rialto coast and the jewel in that crown, Antiva City. I was headed in that direction myself—being an enterprising topsider, I knew then what any entrepreneur worth his weight in the coin he’s trading knows: the bigger the risk, the better the windfall. So long as you made sure to keep your throat from getting slit—and I had my provisions in place.

But there he was. Off the road, you might say, or off the beaten path. He looked like a dead man.

I could’ve just left him there.

Being  an enterprising topsider, I didn’t. With a nose like this one, sticking it where it doesn’t belong isn’t just an indulgence—it’s a natural instinct, and mine’s large enough that it happens easy as turning your head, catching sight of something maybe you shouldn’t.  

If I said I didn’t know who he was the moment I rolled him over and got some water into him I’d be lying, and I’d never do that. Not this early into the story, at least. Most dwarves have a sixth sense for the stone but me—I’ve got it for plot twists. And Blondie…

He was a character, all right.

I guess I suspected who he was right from the beginning, bad as it looked, dire as his straights might’ve been. He was shivering so I built us both a fire—not with the intention of harboring any wanted criminal, mind, but just out of the goodness of my heart. Don’t let all the gold on top of it fool you; there’s _something_ under there.

If only I knew how to wear armor like my ancestors, right?

Still, I _did_ know better. There I was, crouching next to a stranger, propping him up against my bedroll and stoking the embers of a fire I shouldn’t have lit, bringing it back to life. I stayed with him that night because I was curious and you know what they say about curiosity and the nug; if I’ve heard that line once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.

Eventually, platitudes lose their meaning, and I’m not proud to admit it—but I was thinking about stories. The kind of story he might tell me; what I’d go ahead and tell everyone else. I thought about it long and hard that night straight until sunrise, filling up his silences with my ideas, not even sure if he was going to talk.

Not even sure if he _could_.

But that’s the thing, Seeker—all that stuff you try to bury, beat up and beat down—eventually somebody walks by, something about ‘luck’ and ‘fate’ or just being in the wrong place at the right time, and the story gets told.

Dawn was barely creeping up from out Wycome way, with us in the shadow of the trees, my little fire all but dying out and my skein close to empty. He had a thirst I understood at the beginning I just couldn’t quench, and whether it’d dry him out that night or the next day or take me with it had no bearing on how real it was, how neither of us had any right to expect we’d know how to fight it.

Now, I bet you’re wondering why I cared. If I could answer that question, I’d be sitting pretty instead of here in front of you. But it’s all like I said: I was chasing a story, and I figured it was just the same as he was _being_ chased.

So I stuck it out.

The light from the fire was replaced by the sun when he cleared his throat. I gave him the last of the water and he touched the back of my hand—this real simple thing, but he might as well have been holding on for dear life. And when he was finished drinking his fill—or when there was just no water left—he opened his eyes for the first time.

What was I expecting? Even I couldn’t figure that out. Something appropriate, something that matched everything I’d heard, whatever was obvious instead of the truth itself—so at least my suspicions would be confirmed. This had to be the guy, the apostate _everybody_ was after. The real crazy one from _what happened in Kirkwall_.

And to think I’d almost been there. I spent a year or so in the City of Chains, actually, trying to get an expedition together with my brother—but that’s another story for another time, and if I started in on how _that_ went sideways, we’d be here for the rest of the week.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Outside Ansburg. Green Dales on one side, The Weyrs on the other.

There he was, and there I was. Only a dead fire between us.  

‘Varric Tethras at your service,’ I told him, and you can’t blame me for that. You and I can both agree it was the only polite thing to do under the circumstances.

It must’ve sounded good, because he came closer to a laugh than I’d ever see him come again.

I swear, Seeker—it was simple as that. I was heading down that path, minding my own business, when I caught sight of a bustle in the trees, almost like feathers, a flock of pigeons about to take flight. It was a guy on his last legs and I was the busy-body who stopped to help him.

And they say meeting new people is hard.

We spent a few days together, only the two of us. No story comes easy, after all, and sometimes you just have to play it natural, waiting for the inspiration to strike. He had no shortage of nightmares to fill the time and after a while even I started to hear it—footsteps in the distance, like all those templars were marching exaltedly for us. It looked bad; they might think _I_ was an accomplice out of something other than accident—and after that, stubbornness. The drumming turned into a song, until I realized it was just the sound of his heart beating against his ribs.

Or the sound of my heart beating against mine. Like I said—there’s a whole lot right here, under this chest you see before you today.

He didn’t talk much, but that’s never been a problem where I’m concerned. I filled his silences up with my ideas, and after the first night passed I realized: he was listening.

You don’t have to understand what that means to a guy—to a storyteller like me. Some might say he was a captive audience, only I could tell the difference. He _chose_ to listen, leaning closer to me than he did to the fire. When I left to get more kindling he was surprised to see me come back, but I told him, ‘Look, Blondie,’ since he’d never told _me_ his name, ‘I didn’t say what happened to that Antivan Crow, did I? Do I look like somebody who can leave halfway through a story, or even any time before it’s finished?’

He shook his head. Or maybe he just shivered. That’s what I’m telling you—I didn’t know what I was getting into.

The thing is, there wasn’t any point to it. There rarely is when it comes to fiction. As a matter of fact, I knew by the third day we were there killing time while I was killing small game, trying to get him to eat some of it. We’d migrated all the way to a shack, abandoned in the shadows of one of the hillsides along the Minanter. Dragging him there wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that, but they breed them strong down in the deep, and no matter where you go or what you get into, heritage is everything, right? You can look for yourself—not too close—but I’ve got powerful shoulders.

There wasn’t any bed inside the place, which meant there was no problem deciding who got to sleep in it, but there was a bucket, holes stopped up with some old tack. I filled that with fresh water from the Minanter itself, feeling positively domestic, and since my stubble was getting dangerously close to resembling a full beard by then, I took out my razor and shaved.

The way he watched the sunlight winking off the blade—I was the one who was shivering by the end of it.

I didn’t get the bright idea to shave him; there _was_ dirt on his face and nobody else around to see us. Maybe you can’t imagine it—me, cleaning some guy up for no reason other than that he obviously needed it—but I got out a rag from my pack and he let me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was grateful, but he leaned into me all the same.

Pushing his hair back off his brow—that was when I saw the mark. It was only half the shape it should’ve been, only a part of the sun-circle, a brand interrupted. And over the course of that day, I saw it eaten away by the skin, fading—like something on the inside was fighting it off his flesh.

Who knows, though. I’m no expert when it comes to the mark of tranquility. Dwarves don’t have the same trouble with all the Fade stuff, all the magic.

Well, there’s only one thing you can do when you see something like that. You touch it, of course, with the same reverence and the same fear as any other sickness. He definitely shivered then. There was no straight path, mark darkening, lightening, darkening again, even though the position of the sun outside the window hadn’t changed a bit.

He was putting up a good show, but by that point—Seeker, my first instinct was right, since it rarely isn’t. It _was_ a dead man I found on the road that day, well on his way to dying.

There wasn’t much else I could do aside from make him comfortable, and since there wasn’t a bed to speak of, I got this idea that I’d give him something. Couldn’t wrap it up or spend much time on shopping, but it was just enough to take his mind off things—for as long as he lasted.

Now, I’m no healer. I didn’t have a single flask for a potion that wasn’t already full of fell residue and miasma. So I sat back and figured what Blondie needed was his very own champion.

Somebody to be all the things I wasn’t—and at all the right times, too.

I guess you could say he was handsome. Tall. Ample beard, stiff and dark and full. You see, when you get into these things you have to make sure there’s just enough of a difference that it isn’t too obvious what you’re doing. ‘Where you from, Blondie?’ I remember asking, since a story’s only as good as the life it fits into.

He shaped a word on his mouth. I had to piece it together, but it sounded like he was saying _Ferelden_ to me.

So Ferelden it was, more specifically Lothering. Of course, I had to paint a few broad strokes and the timing was off, since I didn’t have my usual books for cross-referencing. Everybody has a weakness, and dates were never my strong suit to begin with. But Blondie was the perfect listener. He didn’t even seem to mind when I told him about the same dank cove twelve times over.

This guy needed a name. It all sounds pretty easy from where we’re standing—or sitting, in my case—but I’m telling you, the moment I thought that, a shadow passed across the window and a hawk perched on the sill. Somebody’s hunting bird, straying too far from the hunt. With any luck, it wasn’t templar-trained, come to spy us out.

‘Hawke,’ I said.

And there it was. The name just…stuck.

I had to play around a little, find out what it was Blondie liked in a main character. He didn’t laugh again—I said that already, didn’t I?—but there were moments when the setting sun hit his face just so, lighting his skin instead of the brand, and I figured it for smiling. I tried big and strong and sweet; I tried bitter, too, somebody angry at everything life threw his way. But I should’ve known all along it was bound to be humor—the only quality to temper tragedy, to make sense out of despair. A joke translates those two things better than the saddest dirge you’ve ever heard in your life.

It’s possible I pilfered a few things here and there from history—Blondie’s and mine. That expedition I mentioned, the one my brother was running, and what I’d seen of Kirkwall. The inn I liked, called the Hanged Man, and a few rogues and cutthroats I’d met everywhere between Lowtown and the Red Lantern District.

If I blurred some of the details, Blondie never complained.

It was supposed to be a short story, only the best laid plans… Anyway, Blondie held on for longer than I expected, somewhere close to a week all told. I took notes for a while but when I ran out of supplies there was nothing left to write with, nothing left to write on. And it would’ve been impossible, anyway—because somewhere along the line, I ended up taking his hand.

It wasn’t supposed to be a romance, either. Still, when I asked Blondie if he wanted something to eat—maybe a sandwich—he grinned, chapped lips splitting. Sometimes I wonder if he thought it was all a part of the story. Anyway, I had that rag and some fresh water, and before I knew it, I was wiping the blood off his mouth.

You know, in the end, I think he was hanging on for my sake—waiting for me to finish the story. I _did_ tell him I hated to leave something like that without a conclusion. I put it off for as long as I could, adding new characters, filling the narrative with odd jobs here and there, only it couldn’t last forever.

No story ever does.

I took him as far as the Chantry, and by that point, I was holding him in my arms for some reason. He wasn’t cold. He didn’t even shiver.

‘What happened next?’ he asked.

His voice sounded just like I’d known it would.

The mark on his brow was gone, nothing more than a furrow above his long nose like I’d always imagined it, too. It seemed to me that he was squinting—at Hawke in the distance, probably putting his big Fereldan foot right in the shit again. All I knew was, he wasn’t looking at me.

And then, he wasn’t looking at anything.

‘Not much,’ I replied, even if it _was_ too late. ‘The end, I mean.’

So there you have it. That’s how I met the apostate you were all looking for. But you don’t have to look for him anymore, and you can check that shack for yourself if you have to, the grave in the back with no name on it to speak of. Dig him up. Bring it to light, even. Although I’m figuring—just like Andraste’s ashes, right?—his bones are bound to be dangerous. 

**END**


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